ST Are we underestimating the morale hit the First Order took?

The FO has been on the roll. They destroyed the Hosnian system which terrorized people from wanting to fight back but as you just said...

The combination of the Resistance fighting back despite limited resources, and blowing up Star Killer base, along with the destruction of the Supremacy, the execution of the Supreme Leader Snoke, and the return of Skywalker who seems unkillable to the public, alongside his young apprentice who killed Snoke and all 8 guards snd escaped (in the minds of the public) is one heck of a comeback story over a 4 day period considering how easy it would have been to quit right after the Hosnian system was destroyed. They fought to the end and inspired a revolution which will come in IX

 

Except destroying SBK is not inspiring the galaxy per the actual narrative of the movie. Only Luke stalling the FO to save a tiny handful of survivors from a wiped out and defeated army is supposedly inspirational.

 

Not necessarily. These things take time to set in. We don’t even know how many days or weeks or months after the events on Crait it is when we see the kids talking about it. They could be telling the whole tale as others are. Just because they cut to the end of the story being told doesn’t mean the beginning wasn’t there. They started somewhere. There’s never been an established set of news in the Star Wars universe so it’s travelling word of mouth like the olden days.

All of the events of that 4 day period combined are probably being talked about later among people all over. It may have taken that long for the news of SKB to even reach the non military ties in the first place. It could be the public that pressures their local governments to join.

 

Okay, if you want to read into it to try and make sense in contradiction of the actual narrative, maybe. But, TLJ explicitly tells us that the galaxy lost all hope before Luke’s force projection. For your explanation to be right, the Resistance was capable of communicating up until their “chase,” but they never told the galaxy, “hey, that new Death Star thing that destroyed the Republic is gone. Yay!” That undercuts the central message that RJ was trying to go for anyway - that it’s all thanks to Luke.

 

4 days isn’t a lot of time when making a decision to join a war or not where the pendulum has swung from a system being destroyed and the FO basically saying “Don’t mess with us or else” and the Supreme Leader being executed and a war hero from the past appearing on a battlefield magically and seeming invincible and announcing that the battle is on and that the Jedi are coming back to this fight to end it as they did the last Great War.

Governments need to debate and gather intel and figure out who they’re up against and what their chances are and that’s hopefully what’s happening. Starting with D’acy’s contact in the Outer Rim that she specifically mentions at the end of the film they are going to first and then building momentum from there.

 

I think that was the whole point of Ep. VII. Ep. VIII was supposed to be about 'hope' but I felt that it was meant to be TFA, but RJ comes and decides to come and render the TFA's map journey pointless.

Case and point, look to Luke's face at the end of Ep. VII. Then Rey's. You can see Luke's hesitance and rusty-feelings as well as the stubborn jaw setting. But then he looks to Rey's unsure face which smoothens into conviction that apparently awes and lights his own spark of hope. That was to be the beginning of what could've been a truly, truly beautiful relationship, but instead, after waiting for two years, RJ decides that moment is where the scene should be soiled in a bit for slapstick comedy.

I say again, if the ST is a cohesive project, I'd hate to see what it'd look like if not.

 

You think he went to the most unfindable place in the galaxy for no reason at all? ;-)

He was done with killing people or thinking about killing people ever again. He didn’t want to become Vader and the last wake up call reminded him how easily someone can slide. He sought solitude at a bucketlist location.

ANH ended on a happy note too. Then TESB rocked those same characters again. The second act is by definition where the characters hit rock bottom before rising again.

 

Heh heh, nice.

No, in the two years prior to TLJ I liked to think he was:

a) Gathering his nerve and recuperating.

b) Discovering an ancient secret that would help them win.

c) Tracing the Jedi back to their routes so that he could truly see what they did wrong and start again properly.

d) All of the above.

I wasn't expecting him to have given up and just wait around to die and leave the galaxy back into the hands of an even worse evil; doesn't matter that wasn't what he did in the end, that's what he was prepared to do from the get-go and take the Jedi lore with him, leaving the galaxy without hope. That didn't seem like cohesive story planning, and more like a ridiculous bid for one movie director to outshine another.

I don't think killing had anything to do with it. He took one shot from his X-Wing and killed the thousands onboard the Death Star without a lightsaber and killed dozens more Imperials with blasters and thermal detonators in a war.

 

First off: there’s this thing called tone. It might do you some good if you watch yours.

Second, “I don’t care what the ending shows”- really? You’re actually serious right now? You will disregard what the movie actually shows to have happened and claim that it didn’t happen?

Third: “If the underlying idea of TLJ is that the rebellion saved because somehow some mostly meaningless event”. You have an interesting idea of what a meaningless event is. Luke Skywalker returning from out of nowhere, holding up an entire army, seemingly surviving the firepower of an entire army and being sliced in half, and humiliating the unproven Supreme Leader of the First Order in front of thousands of his own troops sounds pretty meaningful to me.

Finally, a lot of people saw the event. The entire First Order attack force witnessed it. And word clearly got around.

 

Going off a page from the Visual Dictionary, they apparently kept it under wraps that Finn was a turncoat because it would inspire rebellion in the ranks. I don't know how word got out about Luke's 'triumph' but it definitely had nothing to do with the First Order.

 

Even if people were going to talk about it, wouldn't it be obvious to everyone by the end that he was just some sort of apparition? I mean, he didn't defeat Kylo. He didn't hurt him. And in the end he just disappeared. Soooo, yeah, he pulled off a REALLY cool magic trick. Is that really the kind of thing that is super inspirational?

David Copperfield made the State of Liberty disappear. Super cool trick. But I wouldn't pick him to stoke the fires of a galaxy wide rebellion. Especially when we have on hand a bunch of people who just did something amazing and massively heroic just, what, 4 days ago???

I'm not saying that Luke didn't help out. But I'm just not buying that anyone in the galaxy would really care, outside of the people Luke saved. If people didn't care enough about the Rebellion blowing up the Starkiller base, a base that just killed hundreds of millions of people, to rally to their cause, then some dude using magic to fool the First Order for a few minutes sure as heck isn't going to change things. Even if someone posted a really cool YouTube video of it.

All IMO of course.

 

'Supreme Leader Ren bested by a vanishing Jedi who wasn't even there to begin with.' Yup, definitely wouldn't inspire confidence amongst the FO ranks.

When I saw Kylo in his new caped get up I felt he'd get the chance to grow into more of a badass but instead this movie only highlights he's only trying and failing to be something he's not and will probably never be.

 

We're not talking about whether it caused some lack of confidence among the FO ranks or made Kylo Ren look foolish. Maybe it did--though he seems to act foolish a lot and no one seems to really care.

We're talking about whether it was an event that would spread throughout the galaxy and ignite the fires of rebellion. That is an utterly different thing.

 

Hmm. From a certain standpoint, maybe, but the event is two-fold. Supreme Leader Ren's lack of competence would be equally destructive for the FO's conviction as the so-called spark that lights the fires of rebellion.

 

The galactic community as a whole probably doesn't even know what destroyed the Hosnian system or that it too was destroyed.

Rey said the FO will control the major systems in a matter of weeks. So I take it the bystander systems learn the Republic was wiped out in an instant and suddenly Star Destroyers are jumping out of hyperspace everywhere. That does seem pretty scary and unbeatable. But what's this? People are hearing a tale that the legendary Luke Skywalker faced the FO army by himself? Whoa, now that's something that gets the blood pumping, this guy beat the Empire after all.

That. Right there

 

But where would they hear this from? Are we to assume that the Resistance has been spreading the tale?

 

If the FO is so badly organized that they are going to fall apart because Ren was temporarily fooled by a magic trick, then they were pretty much already doomed. I mean, Ren is pretty dramatically flawed as a leader already. Falling for Luke's subterfuge is barely in the top 10 of disqualifying events in terms of his lack of leadership abilities. I mean the dude is basically a walking mental disorder.

 

So you're saying in the Star Wars universe, there is no Cable News? I mean several planets were destroyed. I think that might earn a mention somewhere in the news of the day.

 

Not fall apart but go into a civil war, Hux definitely looks like he's thought about it once or twice. Can't conquer the galaxy if they're fighting each other.

As the Empire was seemingly meant to die without Palpatine, the First Order seems to be doomed without Snoke at its head.

 

Again, so sure, the FO decides they don't like Ren and decides to go all traitor on him. That is plausible, given he's insane and all.

That still is a totally different thing than trying to say that the entire galaxy is going to be inspired to go to war over what Luke just did.

 

Hux out here like:

 

Maybe it's my sleep deprivation, but I fail to see what your main argument was, then.

 

All that death caught up to him. He just wanted to teach and pass on what he’d learned to people until it all went horribly wrong and he flashed back to his moment in the throne room and realized he’d never dealt with that day in the elation of winning and being with Anakin.

He couldn’t be the hero you wanted to be and he told Yoda as much. But then he became all that and so much more on his own terms. On non-violent terms like Ghandi with God-like Powers. And it was awesome!

 

My main argument stems from the idea that one interpretation of the film is that Luke's action is inspiring people across the galaxy to rise up and challenge the FO.

I can't say if that interpretation is correct or not. If it is, I find it to be a completely unbelievable piece of storytelling. That is my main argument. If you want to argue that it made Ren look foolish or made the FO troops think less of him, that is completely legit. I can't figure out why they put up with him to begin with outside of being afraid of him.

 

Oh, is that all?

Obviously some writers didn't think things through when drawing up the ST storyline. Try not to dwell on it too much. I'm certainly not going to. I don't even know what I was thinking trying to defend the storyline....

Erm, to each their own, I suppose. I'll always have Legends Luke.

 

16 hours is nothing if you feel you have them on a string and they’re down to hundreds and all you have to do is wait and stick to protocol.

Seiges in medieval times used to cut off all food and supplies going into strongholds and just wait for weeks until the people on defence were basically forced to fight while completely on empty.